‘Noynoy’ keeps poll lead; Erap, Villar surge — Pulse Asia

Liberal Party standard bearer Senator Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III has maintained a sizeable lead in the latest presidential pre-elections survey conducted by Pulse Asia, although Senator Manuel “Manny” Villar and former President Joseph “Erap” Estrada are both surging from behind.

The results of the survey that was released Monday showed that Aquino received 45 percent of the voters’ nod.

The nationwide survey fielded last December 8 to 10 used a prepared list of individuals to ask 1,800 respondents who they will vote for if the 2010 elections were held today.

Pulse Asia noted that Villar and Estrada are the only two other contenders who obtained double-digit support with 23 percent and 19 percent, respectively. They are statistically tied at second place owing to the survey’s margin of error of +/- 2 percent.

Compared to the October 2009 Pulse Asia survey, the support for Aquino remains unchanged; however, there is a significant improvement in voter preference for Estrada by eight points from 11 to 19 percent, and by four points for Villar from 19 to 23 percent.

Lakas-Kampi-CMD standard bearer Gilbert “Gibo” Teodoro is in third place with 5 percent from 2 percent last October.

Other individuals included in the survey were Senator Richard Gordon and spiritual leader Bro. Eddie Villanueva, getting 1 percent each of the voter preference.

Aquino obtained majority support among voters in the Visayas (52 percent) and near majority support from the well-off ABC socio-economic class.

Pulse Asia said Aquino’s electoral preference is basically at the same level across the geographic areas National Capital Region, Balance of Luzon and Mindanao, and socio-economic classes D and E.

Given a predetermined set of reasons to choose from, 27 percent of Filipinos say that they opted for a candidate because he/she cared for the poor, while 21 percent cited a candidate’s being not corrupt or having a clean record.

The belief that a candidate is a good person (12 percent), can/is doing/will do something (11 percent) and helps/is helping others (11 percent) constitutes the other reasons for respondents’ presidential preferences.

In the vice presidential race, Nacionalista Party bet Senator Loren Legarda also surged by 14 percent and is now tied on top spot with leading vice presidential candidate Senator Manuel "Mar" Roxas II.

Roxas, the LP bet, got 39 percent of the voter’s support from 37 percent in the October survey while Legarda got 37 percent, up 14 points from 23 percent in the Pulse Asia survey last October.

Pulse Asia said the two are statistically tied in first place due to a +/- 2 percent margin of error while Makati City Mayor Jejomar Binay (Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino) ranked second with 14 percent.

Roxas got a majority of votes in the Visayas (58 percent), while Legarda had a plurality of votes from the rest of Luzon outside Metro Manila (43 percent).

The two front-runners registered the same level of support (41 percent) among Mindanao voters and essentially the same support from the D and E socio-economic classes.

The nationwide survey conducted last Dec. 2 to 8 used face-to-face field interviews of 1,800 respondents and has a +/- 2 percent error margin at the 95% percent confidence level.

Subnational estimates for the geographic areas covered in the survey have the following error margins at 95 percent confidence level: +/- 6 percent for Metro Manila, +/-4 percent for the rest of Luzon and +/-5 percent for each of Visayas and Mindanao.